Roger Daltrey Will Choose Keith Moon Biopic Actor For Their Eyes

Roger Daltrey said he’d choose the actor to play the lead role in his Keith Moon biopic by looking at his eyes. The Who frontman has been working on the project since 2013, and said he was hoping to commence production next year.

“I’ve got to find a Keith Moon,” Daltrey told BBC6 Music in a recent interview. “It’s going to be very, very dependent on the actor and the actor’s eyes. Because you’ve got to cast it completely from the eyes because Moon had extraordinary eyes.” Asked about the challenge of finding a “musician” comparable to Moon, he said: “What makes you think Keith was a fucking musician? He would have said, ‘How dare you, my boy! A musician? I’m a fucking drummer!’”

He added that the vast majority of people who thought they knew Moon were wrong. “I don’t know whether anybody outside the band really got to know him like we did,” he said. “He was a strange bunch of people.”

Known for his larger-than-life antics on and off stage, Moon made his last appearance with the Who in May 1978 when they reconvened for the first time in two years to shoot scenes for a documentary. The drummer was dead four months later, a victim of prescription drugs he’d been using to help him stop drinking. Announcing his involvement in the biopic project in 2013, Daltrey said: "The Keith Moon project is one close to my heart, so I am excited to reinvigorate it." Reports at the time suggested the story would focus on his more outlandish behavior rather than avoid it.